Glass 



Book. 



GENERAL GRANT. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



i 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



GENERAL GRANT 

AN ESTIMATE 



BOSTON 

CUPPLES, UPHAM & CO 
©Xti Corner Bookstore 
1887 



8Hje fyvtit park Press*. 



By Transfer from 
U. S.Sol dFers Home Uby, 
April 1, 1932 



GENERAL GRANT. 
Part I. 

I have heard it said, I know not with what 
degree of truth, that while the sale in America 
of General Grant's Personal Memoirs has pro- 
duced three hundred thousand dollars for the 
benefit of his widow and family, there have not 
in England been sold of the book three hundred 
copies. Certainly the book has had no wide 
circulation here, it has not been much read or 
much discussed. There are obvious reasons for 
this. The book relates in great detail the mili- 
tary history of the American Civil War, so far 
as Grant bore part in it ; such a history cannot 
possibly have for other nations the interest 
which it has for the United States themselves. 
For the general reader outside of America, it 
certainly cannot ; as to the value and importance 
of the history to the military specialist, that is 
a question on which I hear very conflicting opin- 
ions expressed, and one on which I myself can 



4 



General Grant. 



have, of course, no opinion to offer. So far as 
the general European reader might still be at- 
tracted to such a history, in spite of its military 
details, for the sake of the importance of the 
issues at stake and of the personages engaged, we 
in Europe have, it cannot be denied, in approach- 
ing an American recital of the deeds of "the 
greatest nation upon earth," some apprehension 
and mistrust to get over. We maybe pardoned 
for doubting whether we shall in the recital find 
measure, whether we shall find sobriety. Then, 
too, General Grant, the central figure of these 
Memoirs, is not to the English imagination the 
hero of the American Civil War ; the hero is 
Lee, and of Lee the Memoirs tell us little. 
Moreover General Grant, when he was in Eng- 
land, did not himself personally interest people 
much. Later he fell in America into the hands 
of financing speculators, and his embarrass- 
ments, though they excited sorrow and compas- 
sion, did not at all present themselves to us as 
those of " a good man struggling with adversity." 
For all these reasons, then, the Personal Memoirs 
have in England been received with coldness and 
indifference. 

I, too, had seen General Grant in England, and 
did not find him interesting. If I said the truth, 
I should say that I thought him ordinary-looking, 



General G?'a7it. 



5 



dull and silent. An expression of gentleness 
and even sweetness in the eyes, which the por- 
traits in the Memoirs show, escaped me. A 
strong, resolute, business-like man, who by pos- 
session of unlimited resources in men and 
money, and by the unsparing use of them, had 
been enabled to wear down and exhaust the 
strength of the South, this was what I supposed 
Grant to be, this and little more. 

Some documents published by General Badeau 
in the American newspapers first attracted my 
serious attention to Grant. Among those docu- 
ments was a letter from him which showed quali- 
ties for which, in the rapid and uncharitable view 
which our cursory judgments of men so often 
take, I had by no means given him credit. It 
was the letter of a man with the virtue, rare 
everywhere, but more rare in America, perhaps, 
than anywhere else, the virtue of being able to 
confront and resist popular clamour, the civium 
ardor prava jubentiiim. Public opinion seemed 
in favour of a hard and insolent course, the au- 
thorities seemed putting pressure upon Grant to 
make him follow it. He resisted with firmness 
and dignity. After reading that letter I turned 
to General Grant's Personal Memoirs , then just 
published. This man, I said to myself, deserves 
respect and attention ; and I read the two bulky 
volumes through. 



6 



General Grant. 



I found shown in them a man, strong, resolute, 
and business-like, as Grant had appeared to me 
when I first saw him ; a man with no magical 
personality, touched by no divine light and giv- 
ing out none. I found a language all astray in 
its use of will and shall, should and would, an 
English employing the verb to conscript and the 
participle conscripting, and speaking in a de- 
spatch to the Secretary of War of having badly 
whipped the enemy ; an English without charm 
and without high breeding. But at the same 
time I found a man of sterling good-sense as well 
as of the firmest resolution ; a man, withal, hu- 
mane, simple, modest ; from all restless self-con- 
sciousness and desire for display perfectly free ; 
never boastful where he himself was concerned, 
and where his nation was concerned seldom 
boastful, boastful only in circumstances where 
nothing but high genius or high training, I sup- 
pose, can save an American from being boastful. 
I found a language straightforward, nervous, 
firm, possessing in general the high merit of say- 
ing clearly in the fewest possible words what had 
to be said, and saying it, frequently, with shrewd 
and unexpected turns of expression. The Me- 
moirs renewed and completed the expression 
which the letter given by General Badeau had 
made upon me. And now I want to enable 



General Grant. 



7 



Grant and his Memoirs as far as possible to 
speak for themselves to the English public, 
which knows them, I believe, as imperfectly as 
a few months ago I myself did. 

General Grant was born at Point Pleasant, in 
the State of Ohio, on the 27th of April, 1822. 
His name, Ulysses, makes one think of Tristram 
Shandy ; but how often do American names 
make one think of Tristram Shandy ! The 
father of the little Ulysses followed the trade of 
a tanner ; he was a constant reader both of 
books and newspapers, and " before he was 
twenty years of age was a constant contributor/' 
his son tells us, "to Western newspapers, and 
was also, from that time, until he was fifty years 
old, an able debater in the societies for this 
purpose, which were then common in the 
West." Of many and many an American 
farmer and tradesman this is the history. 
General Grant, however, never shared the 
paternal and national love for public speaking. 
As to his schooling, he never, he tells us, missed 
a quarter from school, from the time he was old 
enough to attend till the time when he left 
home, at the age of seventeen, for the Military 
Academy at West Point. But the instruction 
in the country schools at that time was very 
poor : — 



8 



General Grant. 



"A single teacher — who was often a man or a 
woman incapable of teaching much, even if they 
imparted all they knew — would have thirty or 
forty scholars, male and female, from the infant 
learning the A B C, up to the young lady of 
eighteen and the boy of twenty studying the 
highest branches taught — the three R's. I 
never saw an algebra, or other mathematical 
work higher than the arithmetic, until after I 
was appointed to West Point. I then bought a 
work on algebra in Cincinnati ; but, having no 
teacher, it was Greek to me." 

This schooling is unlike that of our young 
gentlemen preparing for Sandhurst or Woolwich, 
but still more unlike theirs is Grant's life out of 
school-hours. He has told us how regularly 
he attended his school, such as it was. He 
proceeds : 

" This did not exempt me from labour. In 
my early days, every one laboured more or less 
in the region where my youth was spent, and 
more in proportion to their private means. It 
was only the very poor who were exempt. While 
my father carried on the manufacture of leather 
and worked at the trade himself, he owned and 
tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, 
preferring almost any other labour ; but I was 
fond of agriculture and of all employments in 



General Grant. 



9 



which horses were used. We had, among other 
lands, fifty acres of forest within a mile of the 
village. In the fall of the year choppers were 
employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve- 
month. When I was seven or eight years of age 
I began hauling all the wood used in the house 
and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, 
of course, at that time, but I could drive, and 
the choppers would load, and some one at the 
house unload. When about eleven years old, I 
was strong enough to hold a plough. From that 
age until seventeen I did all the work done with 
horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, 
ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the 
crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, be- 
sides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, 
and sawing wood for stoves, &c, while still at- 
tending school. For this I was compensated by 
the fact that there never was any scolding or 
punishing by my parents : no objection to ra- 
tional enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the 
creek a mile away to swim in summer ; taking a 
horse and visiting my grandparents in the ad- 
joining county, fifteen miles off ; skating on the 
ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when 
there was snow on the ground." 

The bringing up of Abraham Lincoln was 
also, I suppose, much on this wise ; and meagre, 



10 



General Grant. 



too meagre, as may have been the schooling, I 
confess I am inclined on the whole to exclaim : 
"What a wholesome bringing up it was ! " 

I must find room for one story of Grant's boy- 
hood, a story which he tells against himself :- — 

" There was a Mr. Ralston living within a few 
miles of the village, who owned a colt that I 
very much wanted. My father had offered 
twenty dollars for it, but Ralston wanted twenty- 
five. I was so anxious to have the colt, that, 
after the owner left, I begged to be allowed to 
take him at the price demanded. My father 
yielded, but said twenty dollars was all the horse 
was worth, and told me to offer that price; if it 
was not accepted, I might offer twenty-two and 
a half, and if that would not get him, might give 
the twenty-five. I at once mounted a horse and 
went for the colt. When I got to Mr. Ralston's 
house, I said to him : ' Papa says I may offer you 
twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won't take 
that, I am to offer twenty-two and a half, and if 
you won't take that, to give you twenty-five/ 
It would not require a Connecticut man to guess 
the price finally agreed upon. I could not have 
been over eight years old at the time. This 
transaction caused me great heart-burning. The 
story got amongst the boys of the village, and it 
was a long time before I heard the last of it. " 



General Grant. 



1 1 



The boys of the village may well have been 
amused. How astounding to find an American 
boy so little "'cute," so little "smart" But 
how delightful also, and how refreshing ; how 
full of promise for the boy's future character ! 
Grant came in later life to see straight and 
to see clear, more than most men, more than 
even most Americans, whose virtue it is that in 
matters within their range they see straight and 
see clear; but he never was in the least "smart," 
and it is one of his merits. 

The United States Senator for Ohio procured 
for young Grant, when he w T as seventeen years 
old, a nomination to West Point. He was not 
himself eager for it. His father one day said to 
him : "Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive 
the appointment." "What appointment?" I 
enquired. "To West Point ; I have applied for 
it." "But I won't go," I said. He said he 
thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did. 
I really had no objection to going to West 
Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of 
the acquirements necessary to get through. I 
did not believe I possessed them, and could not 
bear the idea of failing." 

He did go. Although he had no military 
ardour he desired to see the world. Already he 
had seen more of it than most of the boys of his 



12 



General Grant. 



village ; he had visited Cincinnati, the principal 
city of his native State, and Louisville, the 
principal city of the adjoining State of Ken- 
tucky ; he had also been out as far as Wheeling 
in Virginia, and now, if he went to West Point, 
he would have the opportunity of seeing Phila- 
delphia and New York. "When these places 
were visited/' he says, "I would have been glad 
to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, or 
any other accident happen, by which I might 
have received a temporary injury sufficient to 
make me ineligible for awhile to enter the Acad- 
emy." He took his time on the road, and hav- 
ing left home in the middle of May, did not 
arrive at West Point until the end of the month. 
Two weeks later he passed his examination for 
admission, very much, he tells us, to his surprise. 
But none of his professional studies interested 
him, though he did well in mathematics, which 
he found, he says, very easy to him. Through- 
out his first vear he found the life tedious, read 
novels, and had no intention of remaining in 
the army, even if he should succeed in gradu- 
ating at the end of his four years' course, a 
success which he did not expect to attain. 
When in 1839 a Bill was discussed in Congress 
for abolishing the Military Academy, he hoped 
the Bill might pass, and so set him free. But 



General Grant. 



13 



it did not pass, and a year later he would have 
been sorry, he says, if it had passed, although 
he still found his life at West Point dull. His 
last two years went quicker than his first two ; 
but they still seemed to him " about five times 
as long as Ohio years." At last all his exam- 
inations were passed, he was appointed to an 
infantry regiment, and, before joining, went 
home on leave with a desperate cough and a 
stature which had run up too fast for his 
strength. 

In September, 1843, he joined his regiment, 
the 4th United States infantry, at Jefferson 
Barracks, St. Louis. No doubt his training at 
West Point, an establishment with a public and 
high standing, and with serious studies, had 
been invaluable to him. But still he had no 
desire to remain in the army. At St. Louis he 
met and became attached to a young lady whom 
he afterwards married, Miss Dent, and his hope 
was to become an assistant professor of mathe- 
matics at West Point. With this hope he re- 
read at Jefferson Barracks his West Point 
mathematics, and pursued a course of historical 
study also. But the Mexican war came on and 
kept him in the army. 

With the annexation of Texas in prospect, 
Grant's regiment was moved to Fort Jessup, on 



14 



General Grant. 



the western border of Louisiana. Ostensibly 
the American troops were to prevent filibuster- 
ing into Texas ; really they were sent as a 
menace to Mexico in case she appeared to con- 
template war. Grant's life in Louisiana was 
pleasant. He had plenty of professional duty, 
many of his brother officers having been de- 
tailed on special duty away from the regiment. 
He gave up the thought of becoming a teacher 
of mathematics, and read only for his own 
amusement, "and not very much for that ;" he 
kept a horse and rode, visited the planters on 
the Red River ; and was out of doors the whole 
day nearly ; and so he quite recovered from the 
cough, and the threatenings of consumption, 
which he had carried with him from West 
Point. "I have often thought," he adds, "that 
my life was saved, and my health restored, by 
exercise and exposure enforced by an adminis- 
trative act and a war, both of which I dis- 
approved." 

For disapprove the menace to Mexico, and 
the subsequent war, he did. One lingers over 
a distinguished man's days of growth and for- 
mation, so important for all which is to come 
after. And already, under young Grant's plain 
exterior and air of indifference, there had grown 
up in him an independent and sound judgment. 



General Grant. 



1 5 



" Generally the officers of the army were indif- 
ferent whether the annexation was consum- 
mated or not ; but not so all of them. For my- 
self, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and 
to this day regard the war which resulted as one 
of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger 
against a weaker nation." 

Texas was annexed, a territory larger than 
the Austrian Empire ; and after taking military 
possession of Texas, the American army of 
occupation, under General Taylor, went on and 
occupied some more disputed territory beyond. 
Even here they did not stop, but went further 
on still, meaning apparently to force the Mexi- 
cans to attack them and begin war. " We were 
sent to provoke war, but it was essential that 
Mexico should commence it. It was very doubt- 
ful whether Congress would declare war ; but if 
Mexico should attack our troops, the Executive 
could announce: * Whereas war exists by the 
acts of, etc.,' and prosecute the contest with 
vigour. Once initiated, there were few public 
men who w r ould have the courage to oppose it." 

Incensed at the Americans fortifying them- 
selves on the Rio Grande, opposite Matamoras, 
the Mexicans at last fired the necessary shot, 
and the war was commenced. This was in 
March 1846. In September 1847 the American 



i6 



General Grant. 



army entered the city of Mexico. Vera Cruz, 
Puebla, and other principal cities of the country, 
were already in their possession. In February 
1848 was signed the treaty which gave to the 
United States Texas with the Rio Grande for 
its boundary, and the whole territory then in- 
cluded in New Mexico and Upper California. 
For New Mexico and California, however, the 
Americans paid a sum of fifteen millions of dol- 
lars. 

Grant marks with sagacity and justness the 
causes and effects of the Mexican war. As the 
North grew in numbers and population, the South 
required more territory to counterbalance it ; to 
maintain through this wide territory the institu- 
tion of slavery, it required to have control of the 
national Government. With great energy and 
ability, it obtained this control ; it acquired 
Texas and other large regions for slavery ; it 
proceeded to use the powers of Government, in 
the North as well as in the South, for the pur- 
pose of securing and maintaining its hold upon 
its slaves. But the wider the territory over 
which slavery was spread, and the more numer- 
ous the slaves, the greater became the difficulty 
of making this hold quite secure, and the 
stronger grew the irritation of the North to see 
the powers and laws of the whole nation used 



General Grant. 



17 



for the purpose. The Fugitive Slave Law- 
brought this irritation to its height, made it 
uncontrollable, and the War of Secession was 
the result. "The Southern rebellion," says 
Grant, " was largely the outgrowth of the Mexi- 
can war. Nations, like individuals, are punished 
for their transgressions. We got our punish- 
ment in the most sanguinary and expensive war 
of modern times." 

The part of Grant in the Mexican war was of 
course that of a young subaltern only, and is 
described by him with characteristic modesty. 
He showed, however, of what good stuff he was 
made, and his performances with a certain how- 
itzer in a church-steeple so pleased his general 
that he sent for Grant, commended him, and 
ordered a second howitzer to be placed at his 
disposal. A captain of voltigeurs came with 
the gun in charge. "I could not tell the gen- 
eral," says Grant, "that there was not room 
enough in the steeple for another gun, because 
he probably would have looked upon such a 
statement as a contradiction from a second lieu- 
tenant. I took the captain with me, but did 
not use his gun." 

When the evacuation of Mexico was com- 
pleted, Grant married, in August 1848, Miss 
Julia Dent, to whom he had been engaged more 

2 



i8 



General Grant. 



than four years. For two years the young cou- 
ple lived at Detroit in Michigan, where Grant 
was now stationed ; he was then ordered to the 
Pacific coast. It was settled that Mrs. Grant 
should, during his absence, live with her own 
family in St. Louis. The regiment went first 
to Aspinwall, then to California and Oregon. 
In 1853 Grant became captain, but he had now 
two children, and saw no chance of supporting 
his family on his pay as an army officer. He 
determined to resign, and in the following year 
he did so. He left the Pacific coast, he tells 
us, very much attached to it, and with the full 
intention of one day making his home there, an 
intention which he did not abandon until, in the 
winter of 1863-4, Congress passed the Act ap- 
pointing him Lieutenant-General of the armies 
of the United States. 

His life on leaving the army offers, like his 
early training, a curious contrast to what usually 
takes place amongst ourselves. First he tried 
farming, on a farm belonging to his wife near 
St. Louis ; but he could not make it answer, 
though he worked hard. He had insufficient 
capital, and more than sufficient fever and ague. 
After four years he established a partnership 
with a cousin of his wife named Harry Boggs, 
in a real estate agency business in St. Louis. He 



General Grant. 



19 



found that the business was not more than one 
person could do, and not enough to support two 
families. So he withdrew from the co-partnership 
with Boggs, and in May i860 removed to 
Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in a leather 
shop there belonging to his father. 

Politics now began to interest him, and his 
reflexions on them at the moment when the 
War of Secession was approaching I must 
quote : 

" Up to the Mexican war there were a few out 
and out abolitionists, men who carried their hos- 
tility to slavery into all elections, from those for 
a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of 
the United States. They were noisy but not 
numerous. But the great majority of people at 
the North, where slavery did not exist, were 
opposed to the institution, and looked upon its 
existence in any part of the country as unfortu- 
nate. They did not hold the States where 
slavery existed responsible for it, and believed 
that protection should be given to the right of 
property in slaves until some satisfactory way 
could be reached to be rid of the institution. 
Opposition to slavery was a creed of neither 
political party. But with the inauguration of 
the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of 
Texas, the inevitable conflict commenced. As 



20 



General Grant. 



the time for the Presidental election of 1856 — 
the first at which I had the opportunity of voting 
— approached, party feeling began to run high." 

Grant himself voted in 1856 for Buchanan, 
the candidate of the Slave States, because he 
saw clearly, he says, that in the exasperation of 
feeling at that time, the election of a Republican 
President meant the secession of all the Slave 
States, and the plunging of the country into a 
war of which no man could foretell the issue. 
He hoped that in the course of the next four 
years — the Slave States having got a President 
of their own choice, and being without a pretext 
for secession — men's passions would quiet 
down, and the catastrophe be averted. Even if 
it was not, he thought the country would by 
that time be better prepared to receive the 
shock and to resist it. 

I am not concerned to discuss Grant's reasons 
for his vote, but I wish to remark how com- 
pletely his reflexions dispose of the reproaches 
addressed so often by Americans to England 
for not sympathising with the North attacking 
slavery, in a war with the South upholding it. 
From what he says it is evident how very far 
the North was, when the war began, from at- 
tacking slavery. Grant himself was not for 
attacking it ; Lincoln was not. They, and the 



General Grant. 



21 



North in general, wished " that protection should 
be given to the right of property in slaves, until 
some satisfactory way could be reached to be 
rid of the institution." England took the North 
at its word, and regarded its struggle as one for 
preserving the Union, and the force and great- 
ness which accrue from the Union, not for 
abolishing slavery. True, far-sighted people 
here might perceive that the war must probably 
issue, if the North prevailed, in the abolition of 
slavery, and might wish well to the North on 
that account. They did so ; coldly, it is true, 
for the attitude of the North was not such as to 
call forth enthusiasm, but sincerely. A great 
number of people in England, on the other hand, 
looking at the surface of things merely, clearly 
seeing that the North was not meaning to at- 
tack slavery but to uphold the power and grand- 
eur of the United States, thought themselves 
quite free to wish well to the South, the weaker 
side which was making a gallant fight, and to 
favour the breaking up of the Union. 

Here was the real offence. The Americans 
of the North, admiring and valuing their great 
Republic above all things, could not forgive 
disfavour or coldness to it ; could only im- 
pute them to envy and jealousy. Far-sighted 
people in England might perceive that the main- 



o 2 



General Grant. 



tenance of the Union was not only likely to 
bring about the emancipation of the slave, but 
was also on other grounds to be desired for the 
good of the world. Our artisans might be in 
sympathy with the popular and unaristocratic 
institutions of the United States, and be there- 
fore averse to any weakening of the great Re- 
public. And these feelings prevailed here, as 
is well known, so as to govern the course taken 
by this country during the War of Secession. 
Still, there was much disfavour and more cold- 
ness. Americans were,, and are,, indignant that 
the upholding of their great Republic should 
have had in England such cold friends, and so 
many actual enemies. It is like the indignant 
astonishment of George Sand during the Ger- 
man war, "to see Europe looking on with indif- 
ference to the danger of such a civilization as 
that of France." But admiration and favour 
are uncompellable : we admire and favour only 
an object which delights us. helps us, elevates 
us, and does us good. The thing is to make us 
feel that the object does this. Self-admiration 
and self-laudation will not convince us ; on the 
contrary, they indispose us. France would be 
more attractive to us if she were less prone to 
call herself the head of civilization and the pride 
of the world ; the United States, if they were 



General Grant. 



23 



more backward in proclaiming themselves "the 
greatest nation upon earth." 

In i860 Lincoln was elected President, and 
the catastrophe, which Grant hoped might have 
been averted, arrived. He had in i860 no vote, 
but things were now come to that pass that 
he felt compelled to make his choice be- 
tween minority rule and rule by the majority, 
and he was glad, therefore, to see Lincoln 
elected. Secession was imminent, and with 
secession, war ; but Grant confesses that his 
own views at that time were those officially ex- 
pressed later on by Mr. Seward, that " the war 
would be over in ninety days." He retained 
these views, he tells us, until after the battle of 
Shiloh. 

Lincoln was not to come into office until the 
spring of 1861. The South was confident and 
defiant, and in the North there were prominent 
men and newspapers declaring that the gov- 
ernment had no legal right to coerce the South. 
It was unsafe for Mr. Lincoln, when he went to 
be sw r orn into office in March 1861, to travel as 
President-elect ; he had to be smuggled into 
Washington. When he took on the 4th of 
March his oath of office to maintain the Union, 
eleven States had gone out of it. On the nth 
of April, Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour 



24 



General Grant. 



was fired upon, and a few days after was captured. 
Then the President issued a call for 75,000 men. 
" There was not a State in the North of a mil- 
lion inhabitants," says Grant, "that would not 
have furnished the entire number faster than 
arms could have been supplied to them, if it 
had been necessary." 

As soon as news of the call for volunteers 
reached Galena, where Grant lived, the citizens 
were summoned to meet at the Court House in 
the evening. The Court House was crammed. 
Grant, though a comparative stranger, was called 
upon to preside, because he had been in the 
army, and had seen service. " With much em- 
barrassment and some prompting, I made out 
to announce the object of the meeting." 
Speeches followed ; then volunteers were called 
for to form the company which Galena had 
to furnish. The company was raised, and the 
officers and non-commissioned officers were 
elected, before the meeting adjourned. Grant 
declined the captaincy before the balloting, but 
promised to help them all he could, and to be 
found in the service, in some position, if there 
should actually be war. " I never," he adds, 
" went into our leather store after that meeting, 
to put up a package or do other business." 

After seeing the company mustered at Spring- 



General Grant. 



25 



field, the capital of Illinois, Grant was asked by 
the Governor of the State to give some help in 
the military office, where his old army experi- 
ence enabled him to be of great use. But on 
the 24th of May he wrote to the Adjutant-Gen- 
eral of the Army, saying that, " having been 
fifteen years in the regular army, including four 
at West Point, and feeling it the duty of every 
one who has been educated at the Government 
expense to offer their services for the support 
of the Government," he wished to tender his 
services until the close of the war, "in such 
capacity as may be offered." He got no answer. 
He then thought of getting appointed on the 
staff of General McClellan, whom he had known 
at West Point, and went to seek the General at 
Cincinnati. He called twice, but failed to see 
him. While he was at Cincinnati, however, the 
President issued his second call for troops, this 
time for 300,000 men ; and the Governor of 
Illinois, mindful of Grant's recent help, ap- 
pointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois regi- 
ment of infantry. In a month he had brought 
his regiment into a good state of drill and dis- 
cipline, and was then ordered to a point on a 
railroad in Missouri, where an Illinois regiment 
was surrounded by "rebels." His own account 
of his first experience as a Commander is very 
characteristic of him : 



26 



General Grant. 



"My sensations as we approached what I sup- 
posed might be a ' field of battle/ were anything 
but agreeable. I had been in all the engage- 
ments in Mexico that it was possible for one 
person to be in ; but not in command. If some 
one else had been colonel, and I had been lieu- 
tenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt 
any trepidation. Before we were prepared to 
cross the Mississippi River at Quincy, my anx- 
iety was relieved ; for the men of the besieged 
regiment came straggling into the town. I am 
inclined to think both sides got frightened and 
ran away." 

Now, however, he was started ; and from this 
time until he received Lee's surrender at Appo- 
mattox Court House, four years later, he was 
always the same strong man, showing the same 
valuable qualities. He had not the pathos and 
dignity of Lee, his power of captivating the 
admiring interest, almost the admiring affec- 
tion, of his profession and of the world. He 
had not the fire, the celerity, the genial cordial- 
ity of Sherman, whose person and manner emit- 
ted a ray (to adopt, with a very slight change, 
Lamb's well-known lines) — 

" a ray 

Which struck a cheer upon the day, 
A cheer which would not go away — " 



General Grant. 



27 



Grant had not these. But he certainly had a 
good deal of the character and qualities which 
we so justly respect in the Duke of Wellington. 
Wholly free from show, parade, and pomposity ; 
sensible and sagacious ; scanning closely the 
situation, seeing things as they actually were, 
then making up his mind as to the right thing 
to be done under the circumstances, and doing 
it ; never flurried, never vacillating, but also not 
stubborn, able to reconsider and change his 
plans, a man of resource ; when, however, he 
had really fixed on the best course to take, the 
right nail to drive, resolutely and tenaciously 
persevering, driving the nail hard home — Grant 
was all this, and surely in all this he resembles 
the Duke of Wellington. 

The eyes of Europe, during the War of Seces- 
sion, were chiefly fixed on the conflict in the 
East. Grant, however, as we have seen, began 
his career, not on the great and conspicuous 
stage of the East, but in the West. He did 
not come to the East until, by taking Vicks- 
burg, he had attracted all eyes to the West, and 
to the course of events there. 

We have seen how Grant's first expedition in 
command ended. The second ended in much 
the same way, and is related by him with the 
same humour. He was ordered to move against 



28 



General Grant. 



a Colonel Thomas Harris, encamped on the Salt 
River. As Grant and his men approached the 
place where they expected to find Harris, "my 
heart," he says, "kept getting higher and higher, 
until it felt to me as if it was in my throat." 
But when they reached the point from which 
they looked down into the valley where they 
supposed Harris to be, behold, Harris was gone! 
" My heart resumed its place. It occurred to 
me at once that Harris had been as much afraid 
of me as I had been of him. This was a view 
of the question I had never taken before, but I 
never forgot it afterwards. I never forgot that 
an enemy had as much reason to fear my forces 
as I had his. The lesson was valuable." 

But already he inspired confidence. Shortly 
after his return from the Salt River, the Presi- 
dent asked the Congressmen from Illinois to 
recommend seven citizens of that State for the 
rank of brigadier-general, and the Congressmen 
unanimously recommended Grant first on the 
list. In August he was appointed to the com- 
mand of a district, and on the 4th of Septem- 
ber assumed command at Cairo, where the Ohio 
River joins the Mississippi. His first important 
success was to seize and fortify Paducah, an 
important post at the mouth of the Tennessee 
River, about fifty miles from Cairo. By the 1st 



General Grant. 



29 



of November he had 20,000 well-drilled men 
under his command. In November he fought a 
smart action at Belmont, on the western bank 
of the Mississippi, with the object of prevent- 
ing the Confederates who were in strong force 
at Columbus in Kentucky, on the eastern bank, 
from detaching troops to the West. He suc- 
ceeded in his object, and his troops, who came 
under fire for the first time, behaved well. 
Grant himself had a horse shot under him. 

Very important posts to the Confederates 
were Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort 
Donelson on the Cumberland River. Grant 
thought he could capture Fort Henry. He 
went to St. Louis to see General Halleck, 
whose subordinate he was, and to state his 
plan. " I was received with so little cordial- 
ity that I perhaps stated the object of my visit 
with less clearness than I might have done, and 
I had not uttered many sentences- before I was 
cut short as if my plan was preposterous. I 
returned to Cairo very much crest-fallen. 

He persevered, however, and after consulting 
with the officer commanding the gunboats at 
Cairo, he renewed, by telegraph, the suggestion 
that, if permitted, he "could take and hold 
Fort Henry on the Tennessee." This time he 
was backed by the officer in command of the 



30 



General Grant. 



gunboats. Next day, he wrote fully to explain 
his plan. In two days he received instructions 
from headquarters to move upon Fort Henry, 
and on the 2nd of February, 1862, the expedi- 
tion started. 

He took Fort Henry on the 6th of February, 
and announcing his success to General Halleck, 
informed him that he would now take Fort Don- 
elson. On the 16th, Fort Donelson surrendered, 
and Grant made nearly 15,000 prisoners. There 
was delight in the North, depression at Rich- 
mond. Grant was at once promoted to be 
major-general of volunteers. He thought, both 
then and ever after, that by the fall of Fort 
Donelson the way was opened to the forces of 
the N?5rth all over the south-west without 
much resistance, that a vigorous commander, 
disposing of all the troops west of the Alle- 
ghanies, might have at once marched to Chat- 
tanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg, and 
broken down every resistance. There was no 
such commander, and time was given to the 
enemy to collect armies and fortify new posi- 
tions. 

The next point for attack was Corinth, at the 
junction of the two most important railroads in 
the Mississippi Valley. After Grant had, after 
a hard and bloody struggle of two days, won 



General Grant. 31 



the battle of Shiloah, in which a ball cut in 
two the scabbard of his sword, and more than 
10,000 men were killed and wounded on the 
side of the North, General Halleck, who did 
not love Grant, arrived on the scene of action 
and assumed the command. "Although next 
to him in rank," says Grant, "and nominally in 
command of my old district and army, I was 
ignored as much as if I had been at the most 
distant point of territory within my jurisdic- 
tion." On the advance to Corinth, "I was little 
more than an observer. Orders were sent direct 
to the right wing or reserve, ignoring me, and 
advances were made from one line of intrench- 
ments to another without notifying me. My 
position was so embarrassing, in fact, that I 
made several applications to be relieved." When 
he suggested a movement, he was silenced. 
Presently the Confederate troops evacuated 
Corinth in safety, carrying v/ith them all pub- 
lic property. On the side of the North, there 
was much disappointment at the slackness with 
which the enemy had been pressed, and at his 
success in saving his entire army. 

But Corinth was evacuated ; the naval forces 
of the North took Memphis, and now held 
the Mississippi River from its source to that 
point ; New Orleans and Baton Rouge had 



32 



General Grant. 



fallen into their possession. The Confederates 
at the West were now narrowed down, for all 
communication with Richmond, to the single 
line of road running east from Vicksburg. To 
dispossess them of Vicksburg, therefore, was of 
the highest importance. At this point I must 
stop for the present. Public attention was not 
yet fixed upon Grant, as it became after his suc- 
cess at Vicksburg ; and with his success there 
a second chapter of his life opens. But already 
he had shown his talent for succeeding. Car- 
dinal Mazarin used to ask concerning a man 
before employing him, Est-il henreux? Grant 
was lieureux. 



Part II. 

We left Grant projecting his attack upon 
Vicksburg. In the autumn of 1862, the second 
year of the war, the prospect for the North ap- 
peared gloomy. The Confederates were further 
advanced than at the beginning of the struggle. 
Many loyal people, says Grant, despaired at 
that time of ever saving the Union ; President 
Lincoln never himself lost faith in the final tri- 
umph of the Northern cause, but the adminis- 
tration at Washington was uneasy and anxious. 
The elections of 1862 had gone against the 
party which was for prosecuting the war at all 
costs and at all risks until the Union was saved. 
Voluntary enlistments had ceased ; to fill the 
ranks of the Northern armies the draft had been 
resorted to. Unless a great success came to 
restore the spirit of the North, it seemed pro- 
bable that the draft would be resisted, that men 
would begin to desert, and that the power to 
capture and punish deserters would be lost. It 
was Grant's conviction that there was nothing 
left to be done but "to go forward to a decisive 
victory." 



34 



General Grant. 



At first, however, after the battle of Shiloh 
and the taking of Corinth, he could accomplish 
little. General Halleck, his chief, appears to 
have been at this time ill-disposed to him, and 
to have treated him with coldness and incivility. 
In July 1862, General Halleck was appointed 
general-in-chief of all the armies of the North, 
with his headquarters in Washington, and Grant 
remained in Tennessee in chief command. But 
his army suffered such depletion by detaching 
men to defend long lines of communication, to 
repair ruined railroads, to reinforce generals in 
need of succour, that he found himself entirely 
on the defensive in a hostile territory. Never- 
theless in a battle fought to protect Corinth he 
repulsed the enemy with great slaughter, and 
being no longer anxious for the safety of the 
territory within his command, and having been 
reinforced, he resolved on a forward movement 
against Vicksburg. 

Vicksburg occupies the first high ground on 
the Mississippi below Memphis. Communica- 
tion between the parts of the Confederacy divid- 
ed by the Mississippi was through Vicksburg. 
So long as the Confederates held Vicksburg, 
and Port Hudson lower down, the free naviga- 
tion of the river was prevented. The fall of 
Vicksburg, as the event proved, was sure to 



General Grant. 



35 



bring with it the fall of Port Hudson also. 
Grant saw nearly his whole force absorbed in 
holding the railway lines north of Vicksburg ; 
he considered that if he moved forward, driving 
the enemy before him into Southern territory 
not as yet subdued, those lines in his rear would 
almost hold themselves, and most of his force 
would be free for field operations. But in mov- 
ing forward he moved further from his bases of 
supplies. One of these was at Holly Springs, 
in the north of the state of Mississippi ; the 
enemy appeared there, captured the garrison, 
and destroyed all the stores of food, forage, and 
munitions of war. This loss taught Grant a 
lesson by which he, and Sherman after him, 
profited greatly : the lesson that in a wide and 
productive country, such as that in which he 
was operating, to cling to a distant base of 
supply was not necessary ; the country he was 
in would afford the supplies needed. He was 
amazed, he says, when he was compelled by the 
loss of Holly Springs to collect supplies in the 
country immediately around him, at the abundant 
quantity which the country afforded. He found 
that after leaving two months' supplies for the 
use of the families whose stores were taken, he 
could, off the region where he was, have sub- 
sisted his army for a period four times as long 



36 



General Grant. 



as he had actually to remain there. Later in 
the campaign he took full advantage of the ex- 
perience thus gained. 

The fleet under Admiral Porter co-operated 
with him, but all endeavours to capture Vicks- 
burg from the north were unavailing. The 
Mississippi winds and winds through its rich 
alluvial valley ; the country is intersected by 
bayons or water-courses filled from the river, 
with overhanging trees and with narrow and 
tortuous channels, where the bends could not 
be turned by a vessel of any length. To cross 
this country in the face of an enemy was impos- 
sible. The problem was to get in rear of the 
object of attack, and to secure a footing upon 
dry ground on the high or eastern side of the 
Mississippi — the side on which Vicksburg 
stands — for operating against the place. On 
the 30th of January, 1863, Grant having left 
Memphis, took the command at Young's Point 
in Louisiana, on the western bank of Mississippi, 
not far above Vicksburg, bent on solving the 
problem. 

It was a wet country and a wet winter, with 
high water in the Mississippi and its tributaries. 
The troops encamped on the river bank had, in 
order to be out of the water, to occupy the 
levees, or dykes, along the river edge, and the 



General Grant 



37 



ground immediately behind. This gave so limited 
a space, that one corps of Grant's army, when 
he assumed the command at Young's Point, 
was at Lake Providence, seventy miles above 
Vicksburg. The troops suffered much from 
malarial fevers and other sickness, but the 
hospital arrangements were excellent. 

Four ineffectual attempts were in the course 
of the winter made to get at the object of attack 
by various routes. Grant, meanwhile, was 
maturing his plan. His plan was to traverse 
the peninsula where he lay encamped, then to 
cross the Mississippi, and thus to be able to 
attack Vicksburg from the south and east. 
Above Young's Point, at Milliken's Bend, be- 
gins a series of bayous, forming, as it were, the 
chord of an immense bend of the Mississippi, 
and falling into the river some fifty miles below 
Vicksburg. Behind the levees bordering these 
bayous were tolerable roads, by which, as soon 
as they emerged from the waters, Grant's troops 
and waggon-trains could cross the peninsula. 
The difficulties were indeed great : four bridges 
had to be built across wide bayous, and the rapid 
fall of the waters increased the current, and 
made bridge-building troublesome ; but at work 
of this kind the "Yankee soldier" is in his ele- 
ment. By the 24th of April Grant had his 



38 



General Grant. 



headquarters at the southern extremity of the 
bend. The navy under Admiral Porter, escort- 
ing steamers and barges to serve as ferries and 
for the transport of supplies, had run fourteen 
miles of batteries, passed Vicksburg, and come 
down the river to join Grant. A further march 
of twenty-two miles was still necessary in order 
to reach the first high ground, where the army 
might land and establish itself on the eastern 
shore. This first high land is at Grand Gulf, a 
place strongly held at that time by the Con- 
federates, and as unattackable from the river as 
Vicksburg itself. Porter ran the batteries of 
Grand Gulf as he had run those of Vicksburg \ 
the army descended the river a few miles, and on 
the 30th of April was landed at Bruinsburg, on 
the eastern shore, without meeting an enemy. 

Grant's plan had succeeded. He was estab- 
lished on the eastern bank, below and in rear 
oi Vicksburg. Though Vicksburg was not yet 
taken, and though he was in the enemy's 
country, with a vast river and the stronghold of 
Vicksburg between him and his base of supplies, 
yet he " felt a degree of relief scarcely ever 
equalled, since I was on dry ground on the same 
side of the river with the enemy." 

And indeed from this moment his success 
was continuous. The enemy had at Grand 



General Grant. 



39 



Gulf, at Haines Bluff north of Vicksburg, and 
at Jackson, the capital of the State of Missis- 
sippi, in which State all these places are, about 
60,000 men. After fighting and losing an 
action to cover Grand Gulf, the Confederates 
evacuated that place, and Grant occupied it on 
the 3rd of May. By the 7th of May Sherman 
joined him at Grand Gulf, and he found him- 
self with a force of 33,000 men. He then 
determined at once to attack the enemy's 
forces in the r£ar of Vicksburg, and then to 
move on the stronghold itself. In order to use 
Grand Gulf as his base of supplies for these 
operations, he must have constructed addi- 
tional roads, and this would have been a work 
of time. He determined therefore merely to 
bring up by the single road available from 
Grand Gulf, what rations of biscuit, coffee, 
and salt he could, and to make the country he 
traversed furnish everything else. Beef, mut- 
ton, poultry, molasses, and forage were to be 
found, he knew, in abundance. The cautious 
Halleck would be sure to disapprove this bold 
plan of almost abandoning the base of sup- 
plies, but Grant counted on being able to ob- 
tain his object before he could be interfered 
with from Washington. 

The nature of the ground making Vicksburg 



4Q 



General Grant. 



easily defensible on the south, Grant deter- 
mined to get on the railroad running east from 
Vicksburg to Jackson, the State capital, and to 
approach the stronghold from that side. At 
Jackson was a strong Confederate force, the 
city was an important railway centre, and all 
supplies of men and stores for Vicksburg carke 
thence ; this source of aid had to be stopped 
But in order to reach Jackson, Grant had to 
abandon even that one road by which he had 
partially supplied his army hitherto, to cut 
loose from his base of supplies altogether. He 
did so without hesitation. After a successful 
action he entered Jackson on the 14th of May, 
driving out of it the Confederates under Gen- 
eral Johnston, and destroyed the place in so 
far as it was a railroad centre and a manufac- 
tory of military supplies. Then he turned 
westward, and after a severe battle shut up 
Pemberton in Vicksburg. An assault on Pem- 
berton's defences was unsuccessful, but Vicks- 
burg was closely invested. Pemberton's stores 
began to run short. Johnston was unable to 
come to his relief, and on the 4th of July, Inde- 
pendence Day, he surrendered Vicksburg, 
with its garrison of nearly thirty-two thousand 
men, ordnance and stores. As Grant had fore- 
seen, Port Hudson surrendered as soon as the 



General Grant. 



41 



fall of Vicksburg became known, and the great 
river was once more open from St. Louis to the 
sea. 

In the north the victory of Gettysburg was 
won on the same day on which Vicksburg sur- 
rendered. A load of anxiety was lifted from 
the minds of the President and his ministers ; 
the North took heart again, and resolved to con- 
tinue the war with energy, in the hope of soon 
bringing it to a triumphant issue. The great 
and decisive event bringing about this change 
was the fall of Vicksburg, and the merit of that 
important success was due to Grant. 

He had been successful, and in his success 
he still retained his freedom from "bounce" 
and from personal vanity ; his steadfast concern 
for the public good ; his moderation. Let us 
hear his account of being under fire during a 
fruitless attack by Admiral Porter's gunboats 
on the batteries of Grand Gulf : 

" I occupied a tug, from which I could see the 
effect of the battle on both sides, within range 
of the enemy's guns ; but a small tug> without 
armament, was not calculated to attract the fire 
of batteries while they were being assailed them- 
selves." 

He has to mention a risk incurred by himself ; 
but mentioning it, he is at pains to minimise it. 



42 



General Grant. 



When he assumed command in person at 
Young's Point, General McClernand, from 
whom the command now passed to Grant, his 
senior and superior, showed temper and remon- 
strated : 

" His correspondence with me on the subject 
was more in the nature of a reprimand than a 
protest. It was highly insubordinate, but I 
overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the 
service. General McClernand was a member 
of Congress when the Secession War broke 
out ; he belonged to that party which furnished 
all the opposition there was to a vigorous prose- 
cution of the war for saving the Union ; but 
there was no delay in his declaring himself for 
the Union at all hazards, and there was no un- 
certain sound in his declaration of where he 
stood in the contest before the country." 

To such a man Grant wished to be forbear- 
ing when he could say to himself that, after all, 
it was only his own dignity which was con- 
cerned. But later, when an irregularity of the 
same General was injurious to good feeling and 
unity in the army, Grant was prompt and 
severe : 

" 1 received a letter irom General Sherman, 
and one from General MePherson, saying that 
their respective commands had complained to 



General Grant. 



43 



them of a fulsome congratulatory order pub- 
lished by General McClernand to the 13th 
Corps, which did great injustice to the other 
troops engaged in the campaign. This order 
had been sent north and published, and now 
papers containing it had reached our camps. 
The order had not been heard of by me ; I at 
once wrote to McClernand, directing him to 
send me a copy of this order. He did so, and I 
at once relieved him from the command of the 
13th Army Corps. The publication of his order 
in the press was in violation of War Department 
orders, and also of mine/' 

The newspaper press is apt to appear to an 
American, even more than to an Englishman, 
as part of the order of nature, and contending 
with it seems like contending with destiny. 
Grant had governing instincts. " I always ad- 
mired the South, as bad as I thought their 
cause, for the boldness with which they silenced 
all opposition and all croaking by press or by 
individuals within their control." His instincts 
would have led him to follow this example. 
But since he could do nothing against the news- 
paper nuisance, and was himself the chief suf- 
ferer by it, he bore it with his native phil- 
osophy : 

" Visitors to the camps went home with dismal 



44 



General Grant. 



stories. Northern papers came back to the sol- 
diers with these stories exaggerated. Because 
I would not divulge my ultimate plans to visi- 
tors they pronounced me idle, incompetent, and 
unfit to command men in an emergency, and 
clamoured for my removal. They were not 
to be satisfied, many of them, with my simple 
removal, but named who my successor should 
be. I took no steps to answer these complaints, 
but continued to do my duty, as I understood 
it, to the best of my ability." 

Surely the Duke of Wellington would have 
read these Memoirs with pleasure. He might 
himself have issued, too, this order respecting 
behaviour to prisoners : " Instruct the com- 
mands to be quiet and orderly as these prisoners 
pass, and to make no offensive remark." And 
this other, respecting behaviour in a conquored 
enemy's country : " Impress upon the men the 
importance of going through the State in an 
orderly manner, abstaining from taking any- 
thing not absolutely necessary for their sub- 
sistence while travelling. They should try to 
create as favourable an impression as possible 
upon the people." 

But what even at this stage of the war is very 
striking, and of good augury for the re-union 
which followed, is the absence, in general, of 



General Grant. 



45 



bitter hatred between the combatants. There 
is nothing of internicene, inextinguishable, irre- 
concilable enmity, or of the temper, acts, and 
words which beget this. Often we find the 
vanquished Southerner showing a good-hum- 
oured audacity, the victorious Northerner a 
good-humoured forbearance. Let us remember 
Carrier at Nantes, or Davoust at Hamburg, and 
then look at Grant's picture of himself and 
Sherman at Jackson, when their troops had just 
driven the enemy out of this capital of a 
" rebel " State, and were destroying the stores 
and war-materials there : 

" Sherman and I went together into a manu- 
factory which had not ceased work on account 
of the battle, nor for the entrance of Yankee 
troops. Our entrance did not seem to attract 
the attention of either the manager or the ope- 
ratives, most of whom were girls. We looked 
on for a while to see the tent cloth which they 
were making roll out of the looms, with"C.S. 
A."* woven in each bolt. Finally I told Sher- 
man I thought they had done work enough. 
The operatives were told they could leave, and 
take with them what cloth they could carry. In 
a few minutes the factory was in a blaze. The 
proprietor visited Washington, while I was Presi- 
* Confederate States Army. 



4 6 



General Grant. 



dent, to get his pay for this property, claiming 
that it was private." 

The American girls coolly continuing to make 
the Confederate tents under the eye of the hos- 
tile generals, and the proprietor claiming after- 
wards to be paid by Congress for them as private 
property, are charming. 

It was one of Grant's superstitions, he tells 
us, never to apply for a post, or to use personal 
or political influence for obtaining it. He be- 
lieved that if he had got it in this way he would 
have feared to undertake any plan of his own 
conception for fear of involving his patrons in 
responsibility for his possible failure. If he 
were selected for a post, his responsibility ended, 
he said, with " his doing the best he knew how." 

" Every one has his superstitions. One of 
mine is that in positions of great responsibility 
every one should do his duty to the best of his 
ability, where assigned by competent authority, 
without application or the use of influence to 
change his position. While at Cairo I had 
watched with very great interest the operations 
of the Army of the Potomac, looking upon that 
as the main field of the war. I had no idea, my- 
self, of ever having any large command, nor did I 
suppose that I was equal to one ; but I had the 
vanity to think that, as a cavalry officer, I might 



General Grant. 



47 



succeed very well in the command of a brigade. 
On one occasion, in talking about this to my 
staff officers, I said that I would give anything 
if I were commanding a brigade of cavalry in 
the Army of the Potomac, and I believed I could 
do some good. Captain Hellyer suggested that 
I should make application to be transferred 
there to command the cavalry. I then told him 
that I would cut my right arm off first, and 
mentioned this superstition/' 

But now he was to be transferred, without any 
solicitation on his own part, to "the main field 
of the war." At first, however, he was ap- 
pointed to the command of the " Military Divis- 
ion of the Mississippi," and after fighting a severe 
and successful battle at Chattanooga in Novem- 
ber (1863), relieved that place and Knoxville, 
which the Confederates were threatening. 
President Lincoln, who had daily, almost hourly, 
been telegraphing to him to "remember Burn- 
side," to "do something for Burnside," be- 
sieged in Knoxville, was overjoyed. "I wish," 
he wrote to Grant, "to tender you, and all under 
your command, my more than thanks, my pro- 
foundest gratitude, for the skill, courage and 
perseverance with which you and they, over so 
great difficulties, have effected this important 
object. God bless you all ! " Congress voted 



4 8 



General Grant. 



him thanks and a gold medal for his achieve- 
ments at Vicksburg and Chattanooga. 

In the dead of the winter, with the ther- 
mometer below zero, he made an excursion into 
Kentucky, and had the pleasure of finding the 
people along his route, both in Tennessee and 
Kentucky, in general intensely loyal to the 
Union : 

"They would collect in little places where we 
w r ould stop of evenings, to see me. The people 
naturally expected to see the commanding gen- 
eral the oldest person in the party. I was then 
forty-one years of age, while my medical director 
was grey-haired, and probably twelve or more 
years my senior. The crowds w r ould generally 
swarm around him, and thus give me an oppor- 
tunity of quietly dismounting and getting into 
the house." 

At the beginning of the next year, 1864, a 
Bill was passed through Congress for restoring 
the grade of Lieutenant-General in the army. 
Grant was nominated to that rank, and having 
been summoned to Washington he received his 
commission from the President on the 9th of 
March, in the presence of the Ministers. Before 
he came to Washington, he had meant to return 
to his command in the West even after being 
made lieutenant-general ; but at Washington he 



General Grant. 



49 



saw reason to change his mind. The important 
struggle was now between the Army of the 
Potomac and Lee. From what he saw, Grant 
was convinced that in that struggle no one ex- 
cept himself, with the superior rank he now 
bore, could, probably, " resist the pressure that 
would be brought to bear upon him to desist 
from his own plans and pursue others." He 
obtained, therefore, the nomination of Sherman 
to succeed him in command of the Military 
Division of the Mississippi. On the 12th of 
March orders were published by the War De- 
partment, placing Grant in chief command of 
all the armies. 

The position of General Meade, who was at 
that time in command of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, and who had won the important battle of 
Gettysburg in the previous summer, underwent 
a grave change through Grant's promotion. 
Both Meade and Grant behaved very well. 
Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish 
to have immediately under him Sherman, who 
had been serving with Grant in the West. He 
begged him not to hesitate in making the 
change if he thought it for the good of the ser- 
vice. The work in hand, he said, was of such 
vast importance, that the feelings and wishes of 
no one person should stand in the way of select- 



5o 



General G7'<xnt. 



ing the right men. He was willing himself to 
serve to the best of his ability wherever placed. 
Grant assured him that he had no thought of 
moving him, and in his Memoirs, after relating 
what had passed, he adds : " This incident gave 
me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than 
did his great victory at Gettysburg the July 
before. It is men who wait to be selected, 
and not those who seek, from whom we may 
always expect the most efficient service." He 
tried to make Meade's position as nearly as pos- 
sible what it would have been had he himself 
been away in Washington or elsewhere ; he 
gave all orders for the movements of the Army 
of the Potomac to Meade for execution, and to 
avoid the necessity of having to give direct 
orders himself, he established his headquarters 
close to Meade's whenever he could. Meade's 
position, however, was undoubtedly a somewhat 
embarrassing one ; but its embarrassment was 
not increased by soreness on his part, or by 
want of delicacy on Grant's. 

In the West, the great objects to be attained 
by Sherman were the defeat of Johnston and 
his army, and the occupation of Atlanta. These 
objects he accomplished, proceeding afterwards 
to execute his brilliant and famous march to 
Savannah and the sea, sweeping the whole 



General Grant. 



State of Georgia. In the East, the opposing 
forces stood between the Federal and Confed- 
erate capitals, and substantially in the same 
relations to each other as when the war began 
three years before. President Lincoln told 
Grant, when he first saw him in private, that 
although he had never professed to know how 
campaigns should be conducted, and never 
wanted to interfere in them, yet " procrasti- 
nation on the part of commanders, and the 
pressure from the people at the North and 
Congress, which was always with him, forced 
him into issuing his series of Military Orders. 
He did not know but they were all wrong, and 
did know that some of them were. What he 
wanted," he continued, "was a general who 
would take the responsibility and act ; he would 
support him with all the power of the Govern- 
ment." He added that he did not even ask to 
know what Grant's plans were. But such is 
human nature, that the next moment he 
brought out a map of Virginia, showed Grant 
two streams running into the Potomac, and 
suggested a plan of his own for landing the 
army between the mouths of these streams, 
which would protect its flanks while it moved 
out. "I listened respectfully," says Grant, 
with dry humour, "but did not suggest that the 



52 



General Grant. 



same streams would protect Lee's flanks while 
he was shutting us up." 

In Grant the President had certainly found 
a general who would take the responsibility, 
would act, and would keep his plans to him- 
self. To beat Lee and get possession of his 
army, was the object. If Lee was beaten and 
his army captured, the fall of Richmond must 
necessarily follow. If Richmond were taken 
by moving the army thither on transports up 
the James River, but meanwhile Lee's army 
were to remain whole and unimpaired, the end 
of the war was not brought any nearer. But 
the end of the war must be reached soon, or 
the North might grow weary of continuing the 
struggle. For three years the war had raged, 
with immense losses on either side, and no de- 
cisive consummation reached by either. If the 
South could succeed in prolonging an indeci- 
sive struggle year after year still, the North 
might probably grow tired of the contest, and 
agree to a separation. Persuaded of this, Grant, 
at the beginning of May 1864, crossed the Rap- 
idan with the Army of the Potomac, and com- 
menced the forty-three days' Campaign of the 
Wilderness. 

The Wilderness is a tract north of Richmond, 
between the Rapidan and the James River, 



General Grant. 



53 



much cut up with streams and morasses, full 
of broken ground, densely clothed with wood, 
and thinly inhabited. The principal streams 
between the Rapiclan and the James River are 
the branches of the Anna, uniting in the 
Pamunkey, and the Chickahominy. The coun- 
try was favorable for defence, and Lee was a 
general to make the most of its advantages. 
Grant was in an enemy's country, but, moving 
by his left flank, was in connection with the 
sea, of which the Northerners were masters, 
and was abundantly supplied with everything. 
Of artillery, in particular, he had so much that 
he was embarrassed by it, and had to send some 
of it away. Overwhelmingly superior in num- 
bers and resources, he pressed steadily forward, 
failing and repulsed sometimes, but coolly per- 
severing. This campaign, of which the stages 
are the battles of Chancellorsville, Spottsyl- 
vania, North Anna and Cold Harbour, was 
watched at the time in Europe with keen at- 
tention, and is . much better known than the 
operations in the West. I shall not attempt 
any account of it ; for its severity let the losses 
of Grant's successful army speak. When he 
crossed the Rapidan the Army of the Potomac 
numbered 115,000 men; during the forty-three 
days' campaign reinforcements w r ere received 



54 



General Grant. 



amounting to 40,000 men more. When the 
army crossed the James River, it was 116,000 
strong, almost exactly the same strength as 
at the beginning of the campaign. Thirty- 
nine thousand men had been lost in forty- 
three days. 

A yet greater loss must have been incurred 
had Grant attacked Lee's lines in front of Rich- 
mond ; and therefore crossing the James River, 
he invested, after failing to carry it by assault, 
Petersburg, the enemy's important stronghold 
south of Richmond. Winter came and passed. 
Lee's army was safe in its lines, and Richmond 
had not yet fallen ; but the Confederates' re- 
sources were failing, their foes gathering, and 
the end came visibly near. After sweeping 
Georgia and taking Savannah in December, 
Sherman turned north and swept the Can> 
linas, ready to join with Grant in moving upon 
Lee in the spring. Sheridan made himself 
master of the Shenandoah Valley, and closed 
to the Confederates that great source of sup- 
ply. Finally Grant, resuming operations in 
March 1865, possessed himself of the outer 
works of Petersburg, and of the railroad by 
which the place was supplied from the south- 
west, and on the 3rd of April Petersburg was 
evacuated. Then Grant proceeded to possess 



G C7i era I Grant. 



55 



himself of the railroad by which Lee's army 
and Richmond itself now drew their supplies. 
Lee had already informed his government that 
he could hold out no longer. The Confederate 
President was at church when the despatch 
arrived, the congregation were told that there 
would be no evening service, and the authori- 
ties abandoned Richmond that afternoon. In 
the field there was some sharp fighting for a 
day or two still ; but Lee's army was crumb- 
ling away, and on the 9th of April he wrote to 
Grant, requesting an interview with him for the 
purpose of surrendering his army. Grant was 
suffering from sick headache when the officer 
bearing Lee's note reached him, "but the in- 
stant I saw," he says, "the contents of the 
note, I was cured." 

Then followed, in the afternoon of that same 
day, the famous interview at Appomattox Court 
House. Grant shall himself describe the meet- 
ing : 

"When I had left camp that morning I had 
not expected so soon the result that was then 
taking place, and consequently was in rough 
garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was 
when on horseback in the field, and wore a sol- 
dier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder-straps 
of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. 



56 



General Grant. 



When I went into the house I found General 
Lee. We greeted each other, and, after shak- 
ing hands, took our seats. 

"What General Lee's feelings were I do not 
know. As he was a man of much dignity, with 
an impassible face, it was impossible to say 
whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had 
finally come, or felt sad over the result and was 
too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, 
they were entirely concealed from my observa- 
tion ; but my own feelings, which had been 
quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were • 
sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather 
than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had 
fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered 
so much for a cause, though that cause was, I 
believe, one of the worst for which a people 
ever fought. 

" General Lee was dressed in a full uniform 
which was entirely new, and was wearing a 
sword of considerable value, very likely the 
sword which had been presented by the State 
of Virginia. In my rough travelling suit, the 
uniform of a private with the straps of a lieu- 
tenant-general, I must have contrasted very 
strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, 
six feet high and of faultless form. But this 
was not a matter that I thought of until after- 
wards. 



General Gra?it. 



57 



"We soon fell into a conversation about old 
army times. He remarked that he remembered 
me well in the old army (of Mexico) ; and I told 
him that as a matter of course I remembered him 
perfectly, but from the difference in our rank 
and years (there being about sixteen years' dif- 
ference in our ages) I had thought it likely that 
I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to 
be remembered by him after such a long in- 
terval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that 
I almost forgot the object of our meeting. 
After the conversation had run on in this style 
for some time, General Lee called my atten- 
tion to the object of our meeting, and said that 
he had asked for this interview for the purpose 
of getting from me the terms I proposed to 
give his army. I said that I meant merely 
that his army should lay down their arms, not 
to take them up again during the continuance 
of the war unless duly and properly ex- 
changed." 

Lee acquiesced, and Grant, who throughout 
the interview seems to have behaved with true 
delicacy and kindness, proceeded to write out 
the terms of surrender. It occurred to him, as 
he was writing, that it would be an unnecessary 
humiliation to the officers to call upon them to 
surrender their side-arms, and also that they 



58 



General Grant. 



would be glad to retain their private horses and 
effects, and accordingly he inserted in the 
terms that the surrender of arms and prop- 
erty was not to include the side-arms, horses 
and property of the officers. Lee remarked 
that this would have a happy effect on the 
army. Grant then said that most of the men 
in Lee's ranks were, he supposed, small farm- 
ers ; that the country had been so raided by 
either army that it was doubtful whether they 
would be able to put in a crop to carry them- 
selves and their families through the next win- 
ter without the aid of the horses they were then 
riding ; that the United States did not want 
them, and he would therefore give instructions 
to let every man of the Confederate army, who 
claimed to own a horse or mule, take the ani- 
mal to his home. Again Lee remarked that 
this would have a happy effect. 

At half-past four Grant could telegraph to 
the Secretary of War at Washington : " Gen- 
eral Lee surrendered the army of Northern 
Virginia this afternoon." As soon as the news 
of the surrender became known, Grant's army 
began to fire a salute of a hundred guns. Grant 
instantly stopped it. 

The war was at an end. Johnston surren- 
dered to Sherman in North Carolina. Presi- 



General Grant. 



59 



dent Lincoln visited Richmond, which had been 
occupied by the Army of the Potomac the day 
after the Confederate Government abandoned 
it. The President on his return to Washington 
invited Grant, who also had now gone thither, to 
accompany him to the theatre on the evening 
of the 14th of April. Grant declined, because 
he was to go off that evening to visit his chil- 
dren who were at school in New Jersey ; when 
he reached Philadelphia, he heard that the 
President and Mr. Seward had been assassin- 
ated. He immediately returned to Washington, 
to find the joy there turned to mourning. With 
this tragic event, and with the grand review in 
the following month of Meade's and Sherman's 
armies by the new President, Mr. Johnson, the 
Memoirs end. 

Modest for himself, Grant is boastful, as 
Americans are apt to be, for his nation. He 
says with perfect truth that troops who have 
fought a few battles and won, and followed up 
their victories, improve upon what they were 
before to an extent that can hardly be counted 
by percentage ; and that his troops and Sher- 
man's which had gone through this training, 
were by the end of the war become very good 
and seasoned soldiers. But he is fond of add- 
ing, in what I must call the American vein, 



6o 



General Grant. 



"better than any European soldiers" And the 
reason assigned for this boast is in the Ameri- 
can vein too : " Because they not only worked 
like a machine, but the machine thought. Euro- 
pean armies know very little what they are 
fighting for, and care less." Is the German 
army a machine which does not think ? Did 
the French revolutionary armies know very 
little what they were fighting for, and care 
less ? Sainte-Beuve says charmingly that he 
" cannot bear to have it said that he is the first 
in anything ; it is not a thing that can be ad- 
mitted, and these ways of classing people 
give offence." German military men read 
Grant's boast, and are provoked into replying 
that the campaigns and battles of the Ameri- 
can Civil War were mere struggles of militia ; 
English military men say that Americans have 
been steady enough behind breastworks and 
entrenchments against regulars, but never in 
the open field. Why cannot the Americans, 
in speaking of their nation, take Sainte-Beuve's 
happy and wise caution ? 

The point is worth insisting on, because to be 
always seeking to institute comparisons, and 
comparisons to the advantage of their own coun- 
try, is with so many Americans a tic, a mania, 
which every one notices in them, and which 



General Grant. 



61 



sometimes drives their friends half to despair. 
Recent greatness is always apt to be sensitive 
and self-assertive; let us remember Dr. Her- 
mann Grimm on Goethe. German literature, as 
a power, does not begin before Lessing ; if Ger- 
many had possessed a great literature for six 
centuries, with names in it like Dante, Mon- 
taigne, Shakespeare, probably Dr. Hermann 
Grimm would not have thought it necessary to 
call Goethe the greatest poet that has ever 
lived. But the Americans in the rage for com- 
parison-making beat the world. Whatever ex- 
cellence is mentioned, America must, if possible, 
be brought in to balance or surpass it. That 
fine and delicate naturalist, Mr. Burroughs, 
mentions trout, and instantly he adds : " British 
trout, by the way, are not so beautiful as our 
own ; they are less brilliantly marked and have 
much coarser scales, there is no gold or vermil- 
ion in their colouring. " Here superiority is 
claimed ; if there is not superiority there must 
be at least balance. Therefore in literature we 
have "the American Walter Scott," the " Ameri- 
can Wordsworth " ; nay, I see advertised The 
Primer of American Literature. Imagine the 
face of Philip or Alexander at hearing of a 
Primer of Macedonian Literature ! Are we to 
have a Primer of Canadian Literature too, and 



62 



General Grant. 



a Primer of Australian ? We are all contribu- 
tories to one great literature — English Litera- 
ture. The contribution of Scotland to this 
literature is far more serious and important than 
that of America has yet had time to be ; yet a 
"Primer of Scotch Literature" would be an 
absurdity. And these things are not only ab- 
surd ; they are also retarding. 

My opinion on any military subject is of 
course worth very little, but I should have 
thought that in what Napier calls " strength 
and majesty " as a fighter, the American soldier, 
if we are to institute these comparisons, had his 
superiors ; though as brave as any one, he is too 
ingenious, too mental, to be the perfection of a 
fighting animal. Where the Yankee soldier has 
an unrivalled advantage is in his versatility and 
ingenuity ; dexterous, willing, suggestive, he 
can turn his hand to anything, and is of twenty 
trades at the same time with that of soldier. 
Grant's Memoirs are full of proofs of this faculty, 
which might perhaps be of no great use in a 
campaign in the Low Countries, but was invalu- 
able in such campaigns as those which Grant and 
Sherman conducted in America. When the bat- 
teries at Vicksburg were to be run with hired 
river steamers, there were naturally but very few 
masters or crews who were willing to accompany 



General Grant. 



63 



their vessels on this service of danger. Volun- 
teers were therefore called for from the army, 
men who had any experience in river naviga- 
gation. " Captains, pilots, mates, engineers, and 
deck-hands, enough presented themselves," says 
Grant, "to take five times the number of ves- 
sels we were moving/' The resource and 
rapidity shown by the troops in the repair of 
railroads wrecked by the enemy were marvellous. 
In Sherman's Atlanta campaign, the Confeder- 
ate cavalry lurking in his rear to burn bridges 
and obstruct his communications had become so 
disgusted at hearing trains go whistling by, 
within a few hours after a bridge had been 
burned, that they proposed to try blowing up 
some of the tunnels One of them said on this : 
"No use, boys; old Sherman carries duplicate 
tunnels with him, and will replace them as fast 
as you can blow them up ; better save your 
powder! " 

But a leader to use these capable and in- 
telligent forces, to use all the vast resources of 
the North, was needed, a leader wise, cool, firm, 
bold, persevering, and at the same time, as Car- 
dinal Mazarin says, heureux ; and such a leader 
the United States found in General Grant. 

He concludes his Memoirs by some advice to 
his own country and some remarks on ours. 



64 



General Grant. 



The United States, he says, are going on as if 
in the greatest security, " when they have not 
the power to resist an invasion by the fleets of 
fourth-rate European Powers for a time until we 
could prepare for them." The United States 
" should have a good navy, and our sea-coast 
defences should be put in the finest possible 
condition. Neither of these cost much when it 
is considered where the money goes and what 
we get in return." 

The tone and temper of his remarks on Eng- 
land, and on her behaviour during the war, are 
in honourable contrast with the angry acrimony 
shown by many who should have known better. 
He regretted, he said, the exasperation. "The 
hostility of England to the United States, dur- 
ing our rebellion, was not so much real as it was 
apparent. It was the hostility of the leaders of 
one political party. England and the United 
States are natural allies, and should be the best 
of friends." 

The Memoirs stop, as I have said, in 1865, 
and do not embrace Grant's Presidency, his 
journey to Europe, his financial disaster, his 
painful illness and death. As to his financial 
disaster, I will repeat what one of Grant's best 
friends, a man of great business faculty and of 
great fortune, remarked to me. I had been 



General Grant. 



65 



saying, what one says so easily, that it was a 
pity Grant had suffered himself to be drawn in 
by speculators. "Yes," answered his friend, 
"it was a pity. But see how it happened, and 
put yourself in Grant's place. Like Grant, you 
may have a son to whom you are partial, and 
like Grant, you have no knowledge of business. 
Had you been, like Grant, in a position to make 
it worth while for a leader in business and 
finance to come to you, saying that your son had 
a quite exceptional talent for these matters, that 
it was a thousand pities his talent should be 
thrown away, ' give him to me and I will make 
a man of him,' would you not have been flattered 
in your parental pride, would you not have 
yielded ? This is what happened to Grant, and 
ah his financial misfortunes flowed from hence." 
I listened, and could not deny that most proba- 
bly I should have been flattered to my ruin, as 
Grant was. 

Grant's Memoirs are a mine of interesting 
things; I have but scratched the surface and 
presented a few samples. When I began, I did 
not know that the book had been reprinted in 
England ; I find that it has,* and that its circu- 
lation here, though trifling indeed compared to 
that in America, has been larger than I sup- 
* By Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 



66 



General Grant. 



posed. But certainly the book has not been 
read here anything like so much as it deserves. 
It contains a gallery of portraits, characters of 
generals who served in the war, for which alone 
the book, if it contained nothing else, would be 
well worth reading. But after all, its great 
value is in the character which, quite simply 
and unconsciously, it draws of Grant himself. 
The Americans are too self-laudatory, too apt to 
force the tone and thereby, as Sainte-Beuve 
says, to give offence ; the best way for them to 
make us forgive and forget this is to pro- 
duce what is simple and sterling. Instead 
of Primers of American Literature, let them 
bring forth more Maxims of Poor Richard ; in- 
stead of assurances that they are "the greatest 
nation upon earth," let them give us more 
Lees, Lincolns, Shermans, and Grants. 



Matthew Arnold. 



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